"Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four!"
The mouth of Slytherin's statue slid open allowing the basilisk to emerge. Harry Potter was only a second year student and knew of no magic to defeat a mighty snake that could kill or petrify with a mere glance and whose venom was so potent that only phoenix tears could save one who has been bitten. Even if there was a spell that had been taught to him on how to deal with snakes Voldemort had taken Harry's wand so finding no alternative Harry turned and ran, heading back to where the cave had collapsed. He didn't want to leave Ginny but Voldemort seemed to need her alive at least a little while longer. If he could make it through the collapsed section of the cave the basilisk shouldn't be able to follow and perhaps him and Ron could get some help before it was too late.
As he ran he could hear the giant snake catching up to him, its thick skin sounding like very heavy sandpaper on the stone. Voldemort was following behind the basilisk at a more leisurely pace, laughing at how such a coward could be the hero of the wizarding world. Harry didn't think of himself as a coward. A coward was someone who could fight but ran instead. Fighting here would just get him killed and then Ginny would die too. He had run from his cousin Dudley plenty of times too, not because he was really afraid of him or his gang but what good would getting beat up do? Dudley wouldn't get in trouble, Harry would and nothing would change. Thankfully Dudley was as dumb as a rock so all you really had to do was get a little ways ahead and out of sight, then go around a corner and Dudley would just run right by him... Maybe he could do the same thing here? There wasn't much time to find a good hiding spot so as he rounded the corner and saw the cave in just a few feet away he just pressed himself up against the wall, held his breath, and hoped the basilisk would either go right by him or try and make it through the small pathway in the boulders that the cave collapse had left and get stuck. Of course the basilisk was smarter than Harry's cousin so what actually happened was the giant snake noticed him trying to hide as it speed past and then tried to turn and strike at him, but that much weight cannot stop instantly so as the snake turned the corner it slid into the cave wall opposite of Harry causing further collapse of the cave.
Huge stones rained down on the basilisk, crushing and burying it all at once and scattering rocks everywhere on the floor. Harry was lucky to not be crushed as well and was about to move when the sound of feet on the stone reminded him that Voldemort was following as well. Now what was he supposed to do!? Voldemort was an extremely powerful dark wizard and Harry didn't even have a wand! Ron had hit Lockhart on the head with a rock maybe harry could do that too? With no options and even less time harry grabbed a good size rock and as Voldemort came around the corner yelling "Potter! what did you do to my basilisk!" Harry swung as hard as he could. The rock hit Voldemort in the side of the head causing him to collapse in a boneless heap. Harry let go of the rock and snatched his wand up from where Voldemort had dropped it. A quick check showed that Voldemort was still breathing and Harry really didn't want to try and fight him if he woke up. He would be no match for the older dark wizard and he didn't know any good spells to keep Voldemort prisoner. The only thing he could think of was the Petrificus Totalus spell Hermione used back in first year but Harry had no idea how long it would last. If Harry was going to rescue Ginny he couldn't stay here and babysit a knocked out dark lord. So if he couldn't use spells to be sure of Voldemort then he would use the rock again, it seemed to work pretty well a moment ago and he had already killed Voldemort twice before. Once as a baby and once again last year with Quirrell...Third time's the charm right? He lifted the rock and after a moment of hesitation slammed it down on the evil man's head causing blood that had pooled up to splatter everywhere. He had to be sure, Voldemort was tricky. He lifted the rock and slammed it down again. Voldemort was the most evil wizard her knew of. Harry slammed the rock down again. Voldemort had killed lots of people. *Slam* Voldemort almost killed Hermione and had killed lots more like her! *Slam* He was going to kill Ginny! *Slam* He killed his dad! *Slam* And his mum! *Slam* *Slam* *Slam* Harry realized he was screaming and crying and covered in blood some time later. He dropped the rock and tried to push himself away from the mangled corpse of his enemy but his arms were exhausted so he ended up on his side while he emptied his stomach after the horrible thing he had done.
After a few minutes Harry was able to get himself under control enough to stand up and stumble back to where Ginny was lying in the shallow water. She was still cold to the touch but he thought he saw her breathing too. Sometimes when he was in his cupboard back at the Dursley's he was able to watch the telly through the vents on the door. One of the shows Uncle Vernon liked to watch was about what to do if you find yourself out in the wilderness. Uncle Vernon always bragged about how good he would do in such situations. His father had been in the Army you see, and everyone knows they have the best training in the world of course, and such things run in the blood don't ya know. Harry thought his uncle would give himself a heart attack just trying to climb up a hill but the shows that he watched seemed to have good ideas. One of the things they always talked about was that wet clothes made you get cold really fast and that you were supposed to strip down and if other people were around use body heat and a fire to keep warm. Harry couldn't strip down naked with a girl, he just couldn't. He checked Ginny and she didn't have normal clothes on under her robes so he figured he could get her robes off and replace them with his shirt at least? His robes were pretty wet with...stuff, so he couldn't get her a fresh set of everything but he could at least strip his shirt off at least and put that on her. He would just have to do it quick and not really look, that would be ok. It was one of Dudley's old castoffs so it would hang down pretty far so he could get most of her wet clothes off at least. Getting that done without getting too embarrassed was hard but it was to save her life. He didn't feel too cold yet either so anything else dealing with clothes could wait.
Next step was to make a fire. Luckily as a wizard he could always make a fire if he had his wand. But the only fire spell he really knew was not good for much more than starting a fire if he had some wood and if he lit the only pieces of wood around here on fire he and ginny wouldn't have wands anymore. Clothes could burn he knew but the only ones that were even a little bit dry were on ginny and setting those on fire would probably make her a little too hot. So he decided he have a look around, maybe there were some logs from an old fireplace around or maybe even some fresh clothes or a blanket from when Voldemort was down here last. Wearing Voldemort's old clothes and bedsheets didn't sound fun but you did you what had to do sometimes. A quick search did not turn very much up unfortunately, so no evil dark lord clothes for them. The best he could find was a bunch of old books in one of the alcoves of a room he got open with his Parseltongue ability. They appeared to be books written by Salazar Slytherin himself almost a thousand years ago. Hermione would kill him for this but he figured if she woke up to kill him for burning a bunch of old books that means at least her and Ginny would be safe by then because he wasn't going to leave Ginny down here. He thought the least he could do was glance at the pages before burning them up incase there was old arcane knowledge hidden on them but most of them were written in Latin. They used some version of Latin to do some spell casting so he had learned a little bit but most of this stuff was beyond his ability to read so into the fire went page after page.
Just inside the cover of one of the books Harry found a crude map of chamber as well as all of the passwords listed. That would have been pretty helpful for someone before everything went wrong today. Interesting though...It showed that after you used the password to open up the mouth of the statue where the basilisk had been living you could make it out to the black lake! Harry ripped out some more pages and threw them in the fire before jumping up to check out that passageway. If he could just crawl out and get help then everything would be fine. It was kind of hard crawling up inside the thing, The stones making up the teeth were sharp and scratched him up a bit and it was dark. He needed his wand to light the way but also needed his hands to climb. He found out he could cast Lumos and while it was still active he could carefully place his wand sideways in his mouth like he saw sailors do in some movies. Harry wondered if you could cast spells with a wand in each hand and a third in your mouth. Three spells at once would make you pretty powerful, of course you still need to say the spells...and you cant even say 2 spells at once so no super magic for him.
After getting through the mouth of the statue there was a bit of a drop on the other side then the path just descended down into the water. He really didn't want to go down in there but waiting around to be rescued didn't sound like being a great idea either. Gryffindor's forward right? The water was pretty cold and really didn't feel good as he moved forward and it got deeper and deeper. A quick check showed his wand worked underwater at least. Then he ran into another problem. The passageway just keep descending down into the water and he was going to have to dive down, but he didn't know how to swim. The Dursley's would have never paid to get him lessons and probably would be happier if he drowned anyway. He took a big breath and just went for it anyway but didn't get very far before he really needed to breath again and he couldn't see the exit yet so he turned around and went back for the entrance. He could see the light coming in from where the mouth of the statue was open. His lungs were burning by the time he made it back to shallow enough water to kick off the bottom and make it to the surface. He breathed in a little water while gasping for air and just about drowned right there with Ginny still stuck in the chamber. His shoes and robe really weighed a lot when he was trying to keep on the surface of the water. He felt really stupid for wearing them anyway, now all of his clothes were wet too. Harry drug himself out of the water feeling like a drowned rat and back through the mouth of Slytherin's statue where ginny and the fire waited.
It was both good and bad that Ginny was still passed out he thought as he stripped his all his clothes off. If ginny woke up with him naked sitting by the fire and her just wearing his shirt and her underwear she would probably kill him before Hermione even got the chance for burning up those old books. The fire had gone out while he was enjoying his nice swim in the cold dark water so he crumpled up more paper to get it going again when he saw something on one of the pages. It was a spell diagram labeled Aeris Obex. His Latin was pretty poor but he thought that translated into something like Air Barrier. The wand work was really simple too, just the point the wand at the ground and make a series of circles that get larger then smaller like you are running your wand tip along the inside of a sphere. Some testing showed that he could cast it and the bigger the sphere he made with his wand the bigger the barrier of air would get. The only issues was the spell was not something he could cast and then just move on, he had to keep forcing his magic out to maintain the air bubble. But he could make the thing big enough to walk around in without any issue and figured could just do that and carry ginny out on his back. Harry decided to save the rest of the books incase someone else came down here in the future, that would hopefully make Hermione a little happier. He had a plan now and really wanted to get Ginny to a healer as soon as possible. She didn't seem to be any better now than she was before but she was still breathing at least.
Getting Ginny up through the mouth of the statue was really hard, she was just totally limp when he tried to move her. With some effort he was able to get her upper body over the teeth in the mouth and then shove her legs up and over. He felt really bad about it and was pretty sure she was going to end up scratched up like him but he didn't have a lot of other choices if he wanted to get her out. Crawling back through opening himself he found her slumped face down on the floor just on the other side of the statue, crap. He rushed to check on her and found the Slytherin's teeth had cut through his shirt that she was wearing, through some of her underwear and left a few cuts on her chest and legs where she had rested on the teeth while he pushed. They weren't too deep or bleeding that badly but he felt awful for getting her cut and super embarrassed about where the cuts were but he was trying to save her life. He also noticed a bruise forming around her mouth and right eye where her face must have hit the floor. Hopefully madam Pomfrey could fix everything up nice and quick. The next problem was that he couldn't cast the air barrier spell then pick ginny up and go, she weighed too much to carry in his arms anyway. So he need to put her on his back and cast the spell then walk out through the tunnel while keep the barrier up but she kept sliding off his back. Piggyback rides are apparently pretty difficult if only 1 person is awake and both people are about the same size. Both his and her clothes were back in the chamber all they had were his cut up shirt that she was wearing and her cut up underwear. Screw it, he was not climbing back over those damned sharp teeth twice just to get more wet clothes for the 2 of them to wear, why would they make the teeth on that thing sharp anyway? if it opened to allow people or animals in and out shouldn't it be more safe?
He took the shirt off her and since it was already cut up tore it into strips of fabric. He tied those around her wrists so they wouldn't slip off then got her positioned on his back and tied her wrists together in front of him and set off through the previously flooded tunnel naked and with a nearly naked, bruised and cut up girl strapped to his back while holding back immense amounts of water. Oh, and it was dark, pitch black really. Why was it dark? well you can't cast lumos and this stupid air spell at the same time right? That would just be too easy. This was not at all how all the stories of adventure and heroes and close calls go. At least the tunnel was a straight path out to the lake according to the map, he just had to follow the wall and they would make it out. After a while he was getting pretty winded and he noticed he was no longer walking on damp stone but splashing through water that came almost up to his ankles. That was weird. Now that he was paying attention to it the water seemed to be getting deeper pretty steadily. Harry was not sure what was going on to cause the water to somehow be deeper here when his spell was still working but figured he could always go back if needed. Then a horrible thought came to mind and he reached out as far as he could with his hand and moved his wand hand as far away as he could and sure enough the bubble was smaller now. He could stick his hand through the barrier and into the water on the other side. He hadn't noticed because it was totally dark in the tunnel. Feeling pretty panicked he wasted some time unsure of if he should go back to Slytherin's chamber or forward to the lake. He had no idea how long the path was and he and Ginny could drown if he pushed on and it took too long to get to the lake but if he went back to the chamber would anyone ever come rescue them? He had been trying not to think of it but he didn't even know if Ron was ok and made it back out from his end with Lockheart or if when the basilisk caused another cave in it caused Ron to be stuck too. Nothing for it then, Gryffindor's forward.
It was getting hard to walk as the water got up past his knees and he was getting more and more tired, holding the spell was pretty hard too. Harry was pretty sure he was using up too much magic and that was causing the barrier of air to shrink. As the water passed his waist he found some reason to be positive. he could sort of skip along with so much of his weight in the water now. The good news didn't last long though He had to move his wand hand up when he noticed Ginny was getting soaked by being pressed partially through the bubble as it shrank in and he wanted to keep her as warm as he could. He was getting really, really tired and it was hard to breathe, as if he had just been running for a long time. He noticed the water was getting brighter though so the lake must be right in front of them.
As the bubble continued to shrink there was nothing he could do to keep ginny from the water. It had moved most of the way up his chest and he was trying to make sure he kept their heads inside the air pocket but it was so hard to breathe he felt dizzy.
Harry could basically float along now, Ginny wasn't weighing him down either so he could keep her face right next to his.
Ginny would hex herself for missing this, he thought. Harry knew she had a crush on him, and now she was passed out when their mouths were actually touching.
Harry never thought his first kiss would be under a lake with a pretty mermaid with red hair. She kind of looked like someone he knew once but he couldn't really remember who. That was pretty funny and he tried to laugh but only water came out, was he going to be a mermaid now? The sun lit up her red hair like a halo around her head so he pushed her up to be with it.
Angels should be in the sky and mermaids should stay in the water.